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Ember Bear is a Russian state-sponsored threat actor conducting cyberespionage and destructive operations, active since at least March 2021. It is associated with Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, and specifically Unit 29155 through its Cadet Blizzard activity. Tracking names include FrozenVista, Cadet Blizzard, DEV-0586, UAC-0056, UNC2589, Saint Bear, Bleeding Bear, Lorec53, TA471, and Nodaria; additional names include Nascent Ursa and LorecBear. Its principal targets are Ukraine and Georgia, particularly government institutions, diplomatic organizations, defense entities, and critical infrastructure. Identified victims also include organizations in the energy, information technology, health care, financial, and nonprofit sectors. The actor uses spear-phishing, impersonation, malicious Office macros, shortcut files, and multistage loaders to establish access. Lures exploit government correspondence, evacuation planning, public-health notices, and other topical themes. Its malware repertoire includes Graphiron, the Elephant framework's GrimPlant backdoor and GraphSteel information stealer, OutSteel, BabaDeda, SaintBot, and Cobalt Strike Beacon. These tools support remote command execution, document collection, credential theft, screenshots, and collection of SSH-related information. Persistence mechanisms include startup entries and services. Defense evasion includes encrypted payloads and communications, packing, obfuscation, virtual-machine and analysis-tool checks, process injection, and interference with Windows Defender. The actor also acquires malware and tools from dark-web forums and uses legitimate cloud services for payload delivery and exfiltration, including Rclone transfers to MEGA. In January 2022, the actor deployed WhisperGate, also known as PAYWIPE, against Ukrainian government, nonprofit, and information technology organizations before Russia's full-scale invasion. WhisperGate masqueraded as ransomware but was designed to destroy data: it overwrote master boot records and corrupted files, rendering affected systems inoperable. This activity was destructive sabotage rather than a demonstrated financially motivated ransomware operation.
Mallory correlates actor tradecraft and target patterns against your stack, your sector, and your geography. See overlap before they land.
Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
62 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
27 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
22 additional families tracked in Mallory.
19 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 19 of them exploited in the wild.
...has exploited Office vulnerabilities such as CVE-2017-11882...
BlackByte exploited vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon and ProxyShell for initial access... Magic Hound has exploited ... on-premises MS Exchange servers via "ProxyShell" (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207)... Ember Bear ... CVE-2022-41040, ProxyShell, and other vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange.
Ember Bear ... CVE-2022-41040 ... in Microsoft Exchange... Play ... CVE-2022-41082 and CVE-2022-41040 ("ProxyNotShell") in Microsoft Exchange.
This detection identifies instances where Windows Explorer.exe spawns PowerShell or cmd.exe processes, particularly focusing on executions initiated by LNK files. This behavior is associated with the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut zero-day vulnerability, where specially crafted LNK files are used to trigger malicious code execution through cmd.exe or powershell.exe. This technique has been actively exploited by multiple APT groups in targeted attacks through both HTTP and SMB delivery methods.
Ember Bear has used exploits for vulnerabilities such as MS17-010, also known as Eternal Blue, during operations.
14 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
528 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A named activity cluster cited as having TTP overlap with Operation Talked; the content does not assert that it is definitively the same actor.
Annotation-only mention; no actor-specific operation or behavior is described.
Saint Bear is listed in the detection's annotations.
Referenced only as an annotated actor associated with the detection technique.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.